‘INSIGHT’ is the National Management Symposium conducted annually by Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai since 2005. Insight 2015, the tenth edition of Insight was on the 13th and 14th of November 2015 at The Hilton, Chennai. This year the title was “CHANGING LANES ON THE BUSINESS EXPRESSWAY”. Running a business is akin to driving on the expressways where momentum has to be maintained to not be overtaken by others and yet overtake others. There would also be necessity to switch lanes at the right time when there is space.
The first day started with a prayer and then the welcome address by Dr.T.A.Sivasubramaniam, Director, LIBA. Both the days’ business leaders from various industries had shared their insights and practices on how they are changing lanes in the expressway and preparing themselves for a fiercer competitive world tomorrow. The business leaders were from domains like Marketing, HR, Operations, IT, Consulting, Startups, etc
Prof. Amaran Jambulingam (Senior Vice President & Head (Global Operations), Global Determinants Inc, Hobbeez) fondly called as Professor Jay had been a vital member in shaping LIBA during its earlier days. He started the session on throwing insights on how Start-Ups could make a difference and how PM Modi’s THINK TANK Foundation is aligned to help and nurture potential Start Ups. On behalf of AEIOU Inc (a non-profit organization which is a fraternity of Indian Academicians in US), he proposed that AEIOU Inc would be signing an MOU with LIBA on a program called AB@C (Accelerating Business @ CK Prahald’s Center in LIBA) in the current year 2015 aiming at providing support to potential aspiring entrepreneurs.
Dr. N Chandrasekaran ( Director, Jansons school of business in Coimbatore). He emphasized on how Logistics would be the future of businesses especially in Chennai which enjoys a strategic location advantage over any other state in South India; as commodities could be transported to all the neighbouring states in a days’ time.
Dr.J.K.Iyer (Chief Strategy and Analytics Officer, Matrimony.com Ltd) stated, “Strategy is a method that shapes ones desire and Analytics is only the third entity, which could be seemingly onerous to imitate (the other two being Culture and Brand of a company).” When questioned about the most difficult task in Data Sciences; he answered, “Identifying talents and more importantly retaining such talents”. He clearly conveyed the industry expectations to those career aspirants in Data Sciences Domain.
Mr. Pradeep Viswanathan of TAFE, was speaking in detail about Dealer management systems. And how TAFE has incorporated and are dealing with the dynamic requirements of the dealers. And how dealers interact using cloud computing. He also pointed out the changes that have been brought out by then in customer service and the play of IT in it.
Mr. Naveen Valsakumar, Founder, Notion Press Media Pvt. Ltd. and Mr. Vikas Chawla, Co-founder, Social Beat Digital Marketing, spoke on what it takes to convert a business idea to start up and how one must be a watch-dog in its initial years of foundation. The Entrepreneur -Spirit in LIBA students made them raise questions and doubts to both Mr. Naveen and Mr. Vikas.
There were other speakers too across the two days.
‘B-plan contest’ was on last session of the second day. A single team (2 students) from IIM-Trichy was selected among all the registered teams from B-schools across India to present their Business plan to the panel members. There were three teams from LIBA who had presented their ideas too.
Insight 2015 was wrapped up by faculty advisor Dr. S.Chellaiah, Professor and vote of thanks by the Student Coordinator.